


sealed tight, so nothing escapes

by fauxpunk



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Carolina Hurricanes, Childhood Friends to Lovers, Haircuts, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, train surfing, vague references to mental illness and unhealthy coping mechanisms but nothing too explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 23:04:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23122018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fauxpunk/pseuds/fauxpunk
Summary: One night, he comes home with a tooth missing and they don’t say a word. He comes back the next night without a fingernail on his left hand and they lock themselves in their room to talk.About him, about how he’s a problem, about how they’ll get rid of him someday.Andrei lives a full life in his head where he smokes and doesn’t jump trains and his two best friends love him back.
Relationships: Andrei Svechnikov/Teuvo Teravainen, Sebastian Aho/Andrei Svechnikov, Sebastian Aho/Andrei Svechnikov/Teuvo Teravainen, Sebastian Aho/Teuvo Teravainen
Comments: 13
Kudos: 33





	sealed tight, so nothing escapes

**Author's Note:**

> title from my god its full of stars by tracy k smith
> 
> todays coping mechanism: finishing this and pretending like the fact that dougie might be back for rest of the szn due to the suspension makes me any less sad
> 
> alternatively titled: something so vague it fails to explain why three dudes who would not have known each other or lived in america if not for hockey actually do know each other despite Not Playing Hockey
> 
> i feel like i also need to preface that this is startlingly american coded. im working on some sepe/teuvo stuff that is steeped more in their actual culture but seeing as how this is sort of. a rushed flurry of writing there is not much reference to culture outside of what i myself am familiar with (so, basically, life in north carolina) i hope its not too distracting

[I want to be

One notch below bedlam, like a radio without a dial.

Wide open, so everything floods in at once.

And sealed tight, so nothing escapes. Not even time,

Which should curl in on itself and loop around like smoke.]

Tracy K. Smith-My God, It's Full of Stars

The first time Sebastian gives Andrei a haircut, he’s using scissors that lack a blade and Teuvo is writing his times tables on a napkin in the back.

It’s Sebastian’s birthday, or his last day of 6th grade, or some other milestone set for 12-year-olds. The edges of the memory are fuzzy, but the rest of it is still there.

One pair of zig-zag scissors. Two pencils. Three kids who outgrow their clothes too quickly.

Teuvo brags about middle school. Andrei pouts. Sebastian goes in and attempts to snip off the bangs that tickle Andrei’s eyelids. He is not successful.

“C’mon,” Andrei whines. His knuckles are white, hands bunched in the fabric of his own overalls. “Just get it over with. Do it.”

“I’m trying,” Sebastian says, tongue poking out from between his lips. The face of a child too entranced with their own work to be bothered with the consequences. “These work on paper. Maybe they’re not made for hair.”

“Duh.” Teuvo looks up from his napkin to send a knowing smile Andrei’s way. “Only the ladies that work at the salon can cut hair. They’ve got the scissors for it.”

Andrei watches Sebastian snip fruitlessly at his bangs for a moment more before he sighs and throws himself to the floor dramatically. “I guess Andrei will have to be blind for the rest of his life.”

Andrei is rather resigned to his fate.

Then, at least, he didn’t know better.

It’s Teuvo who pilfers a real pair of scissors from his father’s dresser two days later. It’s Sebastian with the blade pressed close to Andrei’s forehead, tongue out in concentration.

The first snip brings Andrei’s bangs to the middle of his forehead, though he can’t see what exactly they look like.

Sebastian gasps and presses a cold towel to Andrei’s face quickly. Teuvo sounds far more pleased.

“You did it,” Teuvo says. Andrei can hear scissors snipping a few more times at the air directly in front of his face.

Andrei’s mother is not as impressed.

He doesn’t see Sebastian or Teuvo again for three weeks.

\--

“You look ridiculous,” Teuvo is saying, but Andrei is far more interested in whatever episode of Naruto Sebastian has playing in the background.

He’s seven weeks into the sixth grade and admittedly, he shouldn’t be as into Naruto as he is. Neither should Sebastian. They’re teenagers. Or something like that.

“Andrei, you need a haircut.” Teuvo runs his fingers through Andrei’s bangs and stares at the strands between his fingers.

“Don’t have the time,” Andrei scoffs. Like he knows what not having any time is like.

“I can do it for you,” Sebastian speaks up, his eyes still glued to the TV.

Teuvo giggles, his cheeks turning red at the edges. Andrei watches his expression change with wonder, the light in his eyes becoming more evident with every second. Andrei’s been around him for long enough to know what trouble looks like.

“Let me get the scissors.” Teuvo pats Andrei’s cheek and darts off into the kitchen.

The second time Sebastian cuts Andrei’s hair, they’re watching Naruto and Teuvo is waiting for disaster.

It’s not that much different from the last time, except for the fact that Sebastian holds scissors that work.

It’s four o’clock. Andrei squeezes his eyes shut and shivers when the blade is pressed to his forehead.

“Do it,” he says.

So, Sebastian does.

\--

Andrei watches Sebastian kiss Teuvo through the fence behind their high school.

There’s something there, deep in his gut that turns over with every passing second. Sebastian’s hands cradle Teuvo’s head and he’s smiling and oh, god they’re happy.

Andrei shouldn’t be watching. But he is. And the longer he observes the more he feels like the floor has disappeared from beneath his feet.

Sebastian thumbs at Teuvo’s jawline, Teuvo laughs and they’re spinning counterclockwise around in Andrei’s head. Spinning, they like to hang out alone a lot, spinning, it’s a wonder they kept Andrei around at all.

This is a lot like heartbreak, Andrei knows that much. Knows the scissors scraping along the inside of his skull are trying to tell him something specific, are trying to choke out a message that sounds something like _ the wanting was the bad part. _

His bangs obscure his field of vision.

Andrei imagines a universe where he’s got a pack of cigarettes available to burn his own skin with, a universe where he can burn himself up from the lungs out.

Sebastian’s laugh carries across the courtyard. Andrei’s intestines twist up tight in his belly, his internal organs all give up at once.

When he gets home, scissors sit shiny on his desk. Andrei considers cutting his aorta open and letting all the poison inside leak out onto his desk. But that would be too dramatic. Instead, uses them for the only purpose of theirs he’s ever been fond of.

“Nice haircut, Svech.” Teuvo teases the next day, looking as perfect as he ever has.

Sebastian stares straight through Andrei and into his chest.

The scissors scrape against his skull. Andrei reminds himself to say nothing in return.

\-- 

Andrei takes to surfing trains after he graduates, while he’s living the months between May and being a productive member of society. No one watches. He likes it that way.

He learns quickly that hesitation means broken bones, means scrapes, means a feeling above the baseline. Something more than normal.

The easiest part about it all is that  _ all you have to fucking do is jump _ .

He comes in late to work three days in a row. Marty asks him twice about the bags under his eyes. He chooses not to answer.

Maybe it’s a form of attention-seeking, not telling anyone about his bruises. He enjoys that Teuvo pouts when he spots a new one, that Sebastian prods at the centers of each dark mark with wonder.

They’d hate him if they knew. They’d hate him if they knew a lot of things.

One night, he comes home with a tooth missing and they don’t say a word. He comes back the next night without a fingernail on his left hand and they lock themselves in their room to talk.

About him, about how he’s a problem, about how they’ll get rid of him someday.

Andrei lives a full life in his head where he smokes and doesn’t jump trains and his two best friends love him back.

\-- 

Years later, Sebastian has a pair of scissors in his hand again. Teuvo stands behind him with his arms crossed. The first snip sees Andrei’s bangs falling to the floor of the too-white bathroom off of Sebastian’s room, strands cluttering up tiles that haven’t seen anything of the sort in weeks. Sebastian’s fingers trail up the side of Andrei’s face, holding his hair between two fingers as he cuts away the split ends, the pieces of Andrei’s soul that sit too exposed.

Teuvo has a hand on Andrei’s shoulder now, he smiles easily, pinches a cheek, finds the parts of Andrei that feel too real and reflects them back in his eyes.

It’s eleven at night, not that time means much of anything to Andrei anymore. The air is heavy, Andrei can feel Sebastian’s hand ghosting across the outside of his thigh, but never really landing anywhere, movement a perpetual question.

Andrei counts the days in his head, thinks about all the times they’ve ended up just like this. How it’s never felt this heavy.

It’s precarious, this balance they have.

Andrei can see the thoughts racing through Sebastian’s brain like they’re being projected onto his face.

“Do it already,” Andrei whispers, eyes trained on Sebastian’s lips, wishing, fucking wishing this would all happen faster.

Sebastian cuts Andrei’s hair. Teuvo stands in the doorway and becomes larger than life.

\--

Andrei surfs trains in the mornings. Sebastian and Teuvo watch from the ground and chatter about the jumps Andrei can and can’t make.

They don’t, not really. Sebastian and Teuvo sleep in their North Hills apartment and dream about things like hurricanes and spinning tops.

Two times, Andrei’s hands barely catch on the sides of the cargo train going who knows fucking where. He feels something in his feet when he makes a jump, feels something in his chest when he thinks about how worried Sebastian and Teuvo would be if they knew what he was up to.

The care is imaginary. He knows Teuvo and Sebastian cease to think of him the moment they can no longer see him.

_ You could die _ , fake Teuvo tuts.

_ You’d be no fun dead _ , fake Sebastian says, but he’s smiling the whole time.

All you’ve got to do is jump. That’s all there is to it. Andrei throws himself from one train to the next and wonders how many it’ll take until someone asks if he’s okay.

\-- 

Sebastian wears his hair slicked back in the summer and Teuvo’s got about three empty jars of hair gel to prove it. Andrei has a job at some advertising agency and he slips the two of them free samples of hair products when he can.

They’re grateful. So, they drag him to movie nights every Thursday and try to hook him up with Marty every other week.

It’s a wonder they don’t know he’s in love with them, he’s done just about everything a boy can do to express himself. Well, aside from talking.

“Say something that’s not one syllable.” Sebastian pokes one of Andrei’s cheeks

“Okay.”

He gets a thump on the shoulder from Teuvo for that one. It doesn’t come without laughter.

It’s impossible to count the times they’ve ended up like this: Sebastian and Teuvo on either side of Andrei with their arms tangled up around Andrei’s neck, his midsection, his heart.

They have to know what they’re doing. Sometimes, when it gets Andrei what he wants, he doesn’t mind the teasing.

“Andrei needs a shower,” Teuvo whines, loud and abrasive right into Andrei’s ear. Sebastian pulls Andrei closer to his chest and he can feel the laughter that rolls through Sebastian’s body.

“Wow, thanks,” Andrei grumbles, mouth obstructed by the presence of Teuvo’s shoulder. “I took one this morning.”

“What do you think, Sebastian?” Teuvo leans over Andrei to press a kiss to Sebastian’s cheek and whisper something Andrei doesn’t catch.

They do that a lot. And Andrei would mind if it didn’t always land one of them half sprawled out across his lap.

“I think I need a shower, too,” Sebastian says after a beat. “We can take one together.”

Andrei chokes on air.

\-- 

The first time Sebastian washes Andrei’s hair, the boy is shaking right out of his skin, is drowning. And Teuvo has his chin on the lip of the tub.

The worst part about it isn’t even Sebastian’s hands. The worst part is that the running water is the loudest thing in the room, that Sebastian’s legs appear distorted in the ripples. Teuvo winks deftly and Andrei is aware that there is some aspect of this he is incapable of grasping.

One of them has their fingers tangled in Andrei’s ribs, working the knots out. The other presses a kiss to Andrei’s shoulder, close-mouthed and chaste.

Andrei thinks it’s Sebastian’s hands that run their way over every bump in his spinal cord, Sebastian that pulls back the curtains. He feels very much like his organs are on display.

They used to do something like this when they were young and fucking stupid. When Teuvo would get his times-tables wrong and Sebastian would play with broken scissors and Andrei would just exist.

This is a lesson in nostalgia, a three-headed monster reforming once more.

There are words on the tip of Andrei’s tongue, the same ones that have been burned into his intestines for years.

There is a need to blur the line between fiction and reality. There’s a question hanging in the air, Andrei just needs someone to do something about it, to let him know that this whole time he’s been chasing smoke.

_ We never loved you _ , fake Sebastian says through the smog.

Real Sebastian moves his hand over Andrei’s chest and turns him around.

“Hi,” Sebastian says, the smile on his face blinding, suffocating.

Teuvo has a hand on Andrei’s damp skin, fingers skittering up and down his arm, never staying still for long.

“Hi,” Andrei mumbles back.

Sebastian’s veins are on display, his chest heaving with every breath. Andrei realizes he’s boxed in, that he’s got walls on all sides and they’re inching closer with every passing second. Slow-moving, Sebastian brings a hand up to the side of Andrei’s head, tangles his fingers there like he’s trying to do something about the soap. They all know he’s not.

It’s Teuvo who breaks first.

“Do it already,” he hisses.

_ Jump. _

So, Andrei does.

**Author's Note:**

> i just think SAT line is neat. thx for reading. stay safe out there
> 
> twt: ciubhockey (with an i instead of an l. god)  
tumblr: clubhockey


End file.
